In
the late nineteenth century, book design in America was evolving, as single-color,
stamped covers embossed in gold (or occasionally silver) gave way to more colorful
designs reflecting the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements.
One region of the country where women book designers and other female artists
were particularly prolific was the Boston area, where the Museum of Fine
Arts offered classes and training, and where designers like
Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904) and others worked. It is in this setting
that Amy Maria Sacker developed her considerable skills, designing book covers
for several local publishers, including Joseph Knight, Estes & Lauriat and
its successor, L. C. Page & Co. She created an advertising poster
for Knight about 1895, and a publicity poster for a Harvard play in 1897. She also designed numerous covers for Little, Brown,
Houghton Mifflin, and other publishers, beginning about 1900.

Her covers show several
distinct styles, from elegant floral and ornate
heraldic designs to the so-called "poster style" covers, exemplified
by her work on several Louisa May Alcott works.
As Priscilla Juvelis
has said on her web site, "She was one of the first to make extensive use
of figurative compositions on book covers, in contrast to the floral motifs
and other abstract decorative designs of Armstrong and Whitman."

Amy Sacker
was born in Boston in the early 1870's. (Many sources say 1876, but
that must be too late.) A November 1965 obituary in the Boston
Herald lists her age as 92, but that should have said 93.
Census records from 1900 appear to list her as being 28, and an 1897
passport application possibly in Amy's hand provides a rather
definitive answer: July
17, 1872. In 1889, she became a student
at the School of Fine Arts, run by
the Museum of Fine Arts, where she first studied under C.
Howard Walker (1857-1936), a well-respected architect, designer
and teacher. She also worked with Joseph
Lindon Smith (1863-1950). In 1892, she was a candidate for a director position with the Boston Art Students' Association. She entered several exhibitions at the
school in the 1890's, winning prizes for her work. Through
her association with the Society of Arts & Crafts, she worked with a number of other female
book designers, including Sara Wyman Whitman and Marion Peabody. In 1912, she served as a judge in a Boston art
show alongside her mentors Walker and Smith.She
later opened her own academy, Miss Amy Sacker's School of Design,
to teach young people these skills. (Her obituary states she opened
that school in 1894, at the age of 21 (!), although another source
mentions 1901, which corresponds to a 50th anniversary celebration
held in her honor in 1951.) She remained affiliated with the
school until the mid-1940's, when she began to devote more time to
the Red Cross. A measure of the renown of her school can be seen
in wedding announcements in the New York Times in the 1920's and 1930's
which mention that the bride was a graduate of the Amy Sacker School.
Susan Morse Hilles (1905-2002),
art expert, art collector, board member, and benefactor of many institutions,
was a student at Sacker's school from 1926 to 1929.

In terms of her
artistic production, both of illustrations and cover designs, one of the aspects
I find most interesting involves the frequent re-use of some of her designs.
While it makes sense for L. C. Page to use a matching binding design for the
"Court Memoir Series" (example
above right, published in 1899 and 1900), the publisher also used other Sacker
designs for a variety of apparently unrelated titles. A couple of designs
in particular seem to have served many purposes: that for Famous
Actors of the Day (1899) reappeared on numerous
books, in different colors, over the next 10 to 12 years, while that for
My Girls. appeared on a variety of very
heterogeneous books.

Her title-page
design for The
Silent Maid (1903) resurfaces several times, including a color version in
Seven Christmas
Candles (1909). More curious, however, is her design for the "Contents"
page of Jackanapes,
which later became the uncredited, unsigned cover design for Charles Kingley's
Westward Ho!
Another curiosity alluded to above: her design for Louisa May Alcott's
My Girls (1903) was later appropriated for a book entitled Their
Canoe Trip !! Further research into the legal and contractual
arrangements between designers or illustrators and their publishers is clearly
needed to understand these patterns of re-use.

Recently I have
discovered that some of her designs done for the Little, Brown editions of Louisa
May Alcott's works were reproduced by Sampson, Low, Marston & Co in London.
Here are some examples. Other foreign publishers
who have issued works with Sacker designs include Musson Book Co. and George
N. Morang in Toronto, Canada, and Macqueen in London.

One thematic
motif that I have found running through her work, both on her covers and in
her illustrations, is the use of floral garlands
to frame images or text.

Another interesting,
albeit minor, element of her creative career is the evolution of her signing
her work. Click here to see the various forms
of her signature and her monogram.

RESEARCH
ON SACKER

In
this section, I hope to be adding links to ongoing research on Amy Sacker, whether
published or in progress. Keep an eye open for additions in the coming days
(weeks/months ??)